I had the Nook Color for 1 week before the big 1.2 update. I had just enough time to read a couple books and let my daughter enjoy about 5 kids books with the "Read to me" feature every day. The first time I read her one of the kids books, she instinctively swiped the page and I remember it being smooth enough that the page moved with her finger as she swiped. We read books every night last week and she absolutely loved it, and so did I. I also used the device the browse the web and read some PDF's at work. The NC was never the smoothest device I had ever seen, but it was smooth enough for me. My boss has an iPad, so I know what smooth looks like.

Then came the 1.2 update. My GOD what happened to this thing? What have B&N done? Now it just randomly turns itself off every once in a while, it's slow and chuggy, I constantly get “Please wait...” across the screen when I'm in apps... and then tonight I just about hit my breaking point. My daughter was trying to read one of the books she's read every night since I got it. She would swipe to turn the page and every other time it wouldn't turn the page. The times it did turn the page, it would turn 2 pages with only one swipe. On top of that it kept either reading narration from the wrong page or stopping the narration before the end.

The only problems I've seen posted about the 1.2 update have to do with the wifi issue. But man, someone else out there must be having the same issues as me. I thought The Big Update was supposed to improve performance, not make it worse. They took 6 months to do... this? That's something Microsoft would do. They better get a patch out quickly to resolve these problems or else I'm taking my device back.

Before the update, I never notice any lag at all. Now I can see a lag of 1-2 seconds when I load up a large book. I'll also see a lag of 1 second when I jump forward to and endnote, and then jump back. I never used to see it before.

The problem was even worse when I tried turning on "Animated Page Turns", so I keep that off.

It is really a shame. This thing is supposed to be an ereader; I wasn't sure the upgrade would improve its performance, but I never expected it to degrade.

I have had these problems, and the battery drains like it's sprung a leak when I use the wifi. My home screen is crazy sensitive (stuff turns on accidentally if a finger's just somewhere near the NC) but the response in the reader for turning pages or even loading already-opened books isn't what it used to be. That Spinning Grey Wheel of Doom they borrowed from OS X is not a welcome addition. The online shop is peculiar, there's missing covers on the front page which loads slowly and they show the gray one when you look at the details, you can only see/buy 10 apps. The update might be also slowly turning me into a bird, because I think I'm starting to get a little angry now...

Sometimes I've found (since that the update) that the browser gets stuck ... it just sits there and spins its wheels, claiming to be loading a page. If I try to stop the page loading, nothing changes.

If I go to a different menu (Library, Shop, etc.), then go back to the browser, it's still sitting there hung up on loading that page.

It occurs to me that when the browser gets in that state, it's probably using a lot of compute cycles, even when I'm doing something else. This might explain some of the extra battery usage, and some of the sluggishness.

I'm having the same problems as SonicClang. Your post could be describing my nook. It's especially frustrating to my grandson. We read his books almost every night, and never had a problem with them til the update. I hope they are able to address these issues soon.

I've had this issue too and also agree with idea that the constant update tries cause the Nook to bog down. I have gotten some relief by using the browser options menu - upper right corner and going to options and then scroll to privacy and clear my cache and browsing history. This seems to help some with the bog down. I don't have any idea how the temporary storage is allocated, but it could be the new flash is filling up too much space?

Thought it was just me. I hope B&N addresses this issue soon, meanwhile is there a way to roll back?

Yes, and no. Yes, you can roll back to an earlier version, but no, unless you keep wifi turned off, it will eventually detect that you're not "up to date", and automatically put you right back where you are now.

Unfortunately, automated updates are not an opt-in thing, nor can they be disabled.

- Mark

(And before someone jumps in with, "Sure you can block updates, if you root", I'm well aware of that, but I'm not going to go into it here.)

I could have written your post word for word, and I'm happy that there are a number of you out there suffering right along with me. I waited eagerly 5 months for this upgrade and the only thing it was succesful in doing was raising my blood pressure. The constant power downs and the ever present freezing of the nook is beyond annoying and frustrating -makes it next to impossible to enjoy what little me time I get.

What I would like to see is a little blurb from B&N acknowledging that they are aware of these issues and that they will be fixed shortly but I've seen zip - other than users on forums complaining about this upgrade. Anyone heard anything?

No... BN has not made an 'official' announcement as far as I know and I've been scanning/searching here and on the internet in general for such an announcement. I've been in touch with Cust.Support frequently as well, and they will not volunteer any information but now, at least, state that certain issues (mine is the wi-fi connectivity issue) are "known" and being worked on.

I frankly do not think BN's reticence is good P/R. In fact, I believe it is just the opposite.

I noticed last night that page turning is much slower than it was. I sometimes have to tap 2-3 times before a page will turn whereas in 1.1 firmware, the flipping was nearly seamless.

All we can do at this point is keep pressuring BN for solutions to these problems. Report your problems either to the Cust.Service online, on the phone or even better, at your local store. And keep after them...

rehtaeh71 wrote:

I could have written your post word for word, and I'm happy that there are a number of you out there suffering right along with me. I waited eagerly 5 months for this upgrade and the only thing it was succesful in doing was raising my blood pressure. The constant power downs and the ever present freezing of the nook is beyond annoying and frustrating -makes it next to impossible to enjoy what little me time I get.

What I would like to see is a little blurb from B&N acknowledging that they are aware of these issues and that they will be fixed shortly but I've seen zip - other than users on forums complaining about this upgrade. Anyone heard anything?

If you continue to have page turning unresponsiveness, which I think is probably due to lag, try doing a soft-restart of your nook (hold down the power button for 5 seconds until the screen goes black, and then turn it back on by holding the power button until the screen flashes on again).

Then after the restart, don't open any apps but just a book and see if the page turning is back to normal or unresponsive. If it is unresponsive, then there is something wrong with B&N software or your hardware (ie reader software, OS update, screen sensitivity)... otherwise probably one of the apps that you use is buggy and causing a memory leak- slowly eating up all of your Nook's RAM.

furyu wrote:

I noticed last night that page turning is much slower than it was. I sometimes have to tap 2-3 times before a page will turn whereas in 1.1 firmware, the flipping was nearly seamless.

While I agree with your premise in many respects (certainly, it's true that resetting devices helps clear electrical static and likewise, clearing out file caches and processes greatly improves performance of computer equipment) and this may help some people in some cases, it cannot be the case for me because I have been unable to connect to the internet since this, my replacement NC, auto-updated to 1.2 last week. Since then, I have not been able to connect, and thus, I have no access to apps. I haven't even opened the Suduko or Crossword apps on the NC itself; and obviously, Pandora isn't working.

Doesn't sound like I am experiencing as great a lag in page-flipping response time as those above have reported; but there has been a noticeable decrease.

purpletatoe wrote:

If you continue to have page turning unresponsiveness, which I think is probably due to lag, try doing a soft-restart of your nook (hold down the power button for 5 seconds until the screen goes black, and then turn it back on by holding the power button until the screen flashes on again).

That's too bad... I read your other post about suggested routers, I think that is your best solution. However, what is the router that you currently have? I have seen online that for some routers you can still get the nook to connect, it just requires specific security settings. You can also double check that it is not a Nook Color hardware or software error by testing wifi connectivity at a free hotspot, like B&N brick and mortar or a starbucks.. or even turning your router's security off for a few minutes.

In any case the slight page lag you mentioned (as others have) just seems to be a memory handling or CPU management issue... my first guess was that 3rd party app developers coded poorly resulting in too many memory leaks which would fill up the 512 MB of onboard RAM leading to poor performance... however it could be bad coding on B&N's side as well. In your situation the page lag may be due to your nook constantly trying & failing to connect to the wifi network, this could be remedied by fixing your wifi problem or just turning off the nook's wifi ;-).

But, it seems like you'll be getting a new router soon and that should fix your problem. -I do not want to defend B&N whole-heartedly (because I don't know if they're at fault), but even Apple products (eg their Macbook Pro line) have wifi issues with certain routers as well that were never really resolved.. so even the best software engineers / products can be hampered by poorly developed 3rd party hardware-routers.

furyu wrote:

... I have been unable to connect to the internet since this, my replacement NC, auto-updated to 1.2 last week. Since then, I have not been able to connect, and thus, I have no access to apps. I haven't even opened the Suduko or Crossword apps on the NC itself; and obviously, Pandora isn't working.

Doesn't sound like I am experiencing as great a lag in page-flipping response time as those above have reported; but there has been a noticeable decrease.

I have a Belkin N1 and it connects with all the other devices in my household.

I have tried changing various settings, changing WPA/WPA2 to WEP, and then disabling both security settings and going 'open'. Everything anyone here has suggested, I've tried.

Nothing has worked.

I live in a small rural area and I don't know of any open-wifi areas, like a coffee shop, or some such. We did have a State park here that offered wi-fi for awhile but due to economic woes, they've discontinued that.

I've tried connecting to some neighbors' routers, no luck there either.

This is a replacement NC; it came with firmware 1.0.1 which I later updated to 1.1. It connected just fine (like my original one) prior to the auto-update to 1.2. I'd left wi-fi off for about a week after I got the replacement, and then was attempting to download some books onto it and walked away. Within just a window of 10-minutes, it auto-updated to 1.2 and from thereon, I haven't been able to connect.

I do keep it off Wi-Fi for battery reasons. There is no point in keeping wi-fi on since it won't connect. The page flipping isn't too bad. Just a little annoying at this point. I just wish that was the only issue I had with it.

The thing about the router is that there doesn't appear to be any one specific router that is causing the problems. I really don't think this is a 'router' issue. It's an NC issue. The device apparently had wi-fi connection problems even before the update.

I've read of people having the problem with DLink, Linksys, Belkin, etc., and yet, I've heard of people with Belkin routers similar to mine who haven't had any connection problems. So, I'm rather reluctant to replace my otherwise perfect router and have to change my entire set up simply for this NC and what happens if it still doesn't work? I'd have to order a router (limited availability where I live), and then if it still doesn't work, what? Do I return the router? Pack it up, ship it back. All these hassels. It's going on one month now since this started... I've wasted a lot of time, and I'm not anxious to start wasting money too.

So... I've got options, rolling back and rooting it being one option; another one is to wait until I get a permanent fix from BN. I may be traveling to the BN store later this week (5 hours r/t) at which time I'll take my NC and my router and say to the Nook guy/gal, "here... fix it." I want to take my router in so that I know it works with my router, and not just their inhouse system. So, that's why I'm holding off on the rolling back & rooting it. I know I can always do that.

I've been able to download books to my 'classic' Nook.

I agree; Apple and I suppose Amazon too has had their share of trouble with their products. Technology is very complicated and to try to get so many disparate software & harware technologies to work together seamlessly, especially when there are proprietary issues in play, well... it's a real challenge for developers and IT personnel. But I still have many complaints as to BN's handling of this whole update thing. I'll spare you my repeating them!

purpletatoe wrote:

That's too bad... I read your other post about suggested routers, I think that is your best solution. However, what is the router that you currently have? I have seen online that for some routers you can still get the nook to connect, it just requires specific security settings. You can also double check that it is not a Nook Color hardware or software error by testing wifi connectivity at a free hotspot, like B&N brick and mortar or a starbucks.. or even turning your router's security off for a few minutes.

Have any of you figured this out yet? I do not have the problem mentioned, but it sounds a lot like your RAM is getting filled up causing laaag (by opened apps or some faulty app that is leaking memory). Maybe there is a common 3rd party app all of you have downloaded. I am not 100% positive, but I think in android the apps will sometimes remain running in the background after they have been opened -hogging up memory & cpu.

I would think a restart of the nook (holding down the power button until it shuts off) should fix this problem -it will clear your RAM and kill all apps. Of course you'd have to restart every time your memory gets filled up and your nook becomes laggy. or you could try to identify which apps you have used that may be causing it and stop using that app until the app publisher updates.

I am pretty much in the same boat; i have flashed back to 1.1 and my library with 500 books loads smoothly with the no issues. Flash back to 1.2 and the library takes an entire evolution cycle to load. This has to be somehting with the new update; beyond that the browser has started to crash frequently on 1.2; my daughter loves watching tom and jerry on you tube so I was happy that I didnt' have to root the new OS and install the youtube app in order to do this.

Looks like I am going to go back to 1.2 and root the device to stop it from auto updating to 1.2 version till they fix the slow library issue.

The best workaround I have found to this is instead of usinghte library, I go straight to "my files" and just directly load the book from the folders rather than depending on the library to laod.

I HAVE BEEN HAVING THIS PROBLEM ALSO. IT HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR THE PAST TWO DAYS. THE PAGES TURN SLOWLY AND SOMETIMES IF FREEZES. IT ALSOTAKES FOREVER TO TURN TO THE PREVIOUS PAGE. IT IS SOOOO MUCH SLOWER NOW. I DON'T KNOW IF THE UPDATE WAS SUCH A GOOD IDEA.

I suddenly had this same issue get worse and worse. Apps stopped working, library wouldn't open. Nothing was working well. So I decided to undo the entire setup and start from scratch. This seems to be working. I am sure one of the apps is causing this issue. Some of the apps are probably trying to connect out, but its impossible to tell whats really running.

So far this has helped. And I have not reinstalled all my apps.

I was told that in Dec 2011 there will be another major upgrade for the device. I hope so. Its becoming annoying.

I suddenly had this same issue get worse and worse. Apps stopped working, library wouldn't open. Nothing was working well. So I decided to undo the entire setup and start from scratch. This seems to be working. I am sure one of the apps is causing this issue. Some of the apps are probably trying to connect out, but its impossible to tell whats really running.

So far this has helped. And I have not reinstalled all my apps.

I was told that in Dec 2011 there will be another major upgrade for the device. I hope so. Its becoming annoying.

Just as phone apps can mess with your smartphone, I am sure an app can do the same thing to the NC. Not sure why this happens, but it does. Always think back to the last app you installed before the problems began, uninstall it, and see if the problems go away. I know it works wonders for Android phones.